When it comes to growing your brand, your conversion rate is one of the most important metrics to look at. At the end of the day, if your site doesn’t convert, it’ll be very difficult to scale profitably.

Plus, if your store has a low conversion rate, that will have a massive negative impact on every other aspect of your marketing strategy. For example, even if you have the best ads in the world, if you send those people to a website that doesn’t convert, you’re just going to waste your money!

Before we dive into the nitty gritty details of improving your conversion rate, let’s look at some of the blue sky concepts.

Overall, big picture keys to success

1. Regularly test your site to make sure that the ordering process is easy and
2. Make sure your site is easy to navigate and find specific products or information
3. Ensure that your links work
4. Ensure that your search functionality actually works
5. Keep your website in sync with any promo that you’re running and be sure to remove promos as soon as they are over
6. Make sure the content throughout your website matches your target audience
   
   

Home Page

7. Strong hero section that shows who you are, what you do, and how to buy from you
8. Any media recognition that you have
9. Educational content around your products and/or brand
10. Value propositionsBest seller quick buy
11. Testimonials
12. Collection overview
13. Lifestyle content to connect with your target audience
14. Direct chat, especially if you get a lot of questions about your products
15. Email collection popup with a ~15% off offer and 1-2 questions to help segment your audience

Collection Pages

16. Add in filtering for different product attributes, especially if you have larger collections
17. Simple and organized collections that can act as landing pages for ads
18. Test different sorting types to sell specific products first and help people find products faster
19. Keep product photos uniform 
20. Breadcrumbs to help with navigation and going back to previous pages

Product Pages

21. Use the best quality product images that you can
22. Make sure that the image file size is compressed so you don’t harm load times
23. Your product images should show everything that’s included in the order and nothing more. Showing more can confuse customers and increase returns
24. Utilize product videos - either short videos within the image carousel or longer video just below the fold
25. Add contrast to your add to cart button
26. Clearly show any financing options, especially for more expensive products
27. Utilize out of stock notifications with emails and marketing opt in
28. Mention shipping expectations (ex. Free shipping, long shipping times, etc…) - do not let shipping rates be a surprise
29. Show reviews from customers - bonus points if you utilize UGC within your reviews
30. Build long form product pages to focus on the benefits of the products while educating your customers about why they need your product
31. Utilize lifestyle content to show your products in action
32. Build a FAQs section, especially for more technical products 
33. Create simple to use sizing guides or fitment guides to help people order the correct product
    

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Navigation

34. Your navigation needs to be designed to help your customers find products as quickly as possible.
35. For smaller stores, simple navigation typically works well
36. For larger stores, mega menus with images can show people where to go
37. Navigation tabs should show the most to least popular touch points from left to right
38. Use your navigation to guide to people to specific products/collections that you want to sell
39. Create a simple header with either a promo or shipping notes. Use this section to add a little incentive or urgency to purchase

Checkout

With Shopify, your checkout is fairly locked down, but there are simple things you can do to help streamline your checkout process

40. Make account sign up optional
41. Make the guest checkout easy to see 
42. Make sure your checkout page is branded with your logo and colors
43. Make sure your marketing newsletter is defaulted to opt in
44. Reduce links away from checkout as much as possible. Think of your checkout as a tunnel with the only way out being to complete purchase
45. Show your shipping rate or free shipping rates clearly
46. Show your different payment methods, but don’t overdo it

Value-Add Pages

47. Value add pages such as look books, podcasts, resources, etc… can help bring people deeper into your ecosystem
48. For more technical products, create post purchase pages (such as install guides) can be very help to bring people back to your store
49. Make sure these pages have calls to action to guide people to relevant collections/products
    
    

SEO

50. Use your value-add pages to help with your SEO campaigns - these can help with your organic traffic to bring people back into your ecosystem
51. Dial in your title tags and meta descriptions to improve your click through rates from Google
52. Use blogs to your advantage. Not only can these help get people to your site, but write your blogs to educate or inspire people while helping them feel more connected to your brand. Blogs can also be used to build trust!
53. Make sure your alt tags are correct for your images
54. Use tools such as Semrush to track your website health then improve accordingly

Integrations And Apps

55. Every store is unique and needs unique apps for the user experience
56. Utilize email platforms like Klaviyo and JustUno
57. Bundle apps can work well for increase average order values easily
58. Add a review app that you like and you can afford. There are a lot of review apps, so find one that fits your needs!
59. Add financing apps like Klarna or Affirm - especially for more expensive products
60. Don’t overdo your apps. Apps will slow down your site and most of them are overkill!

Email

61. As we all know, email is one of the best ways to save a sale, so make sure all of your abandoned cart flows are dialed in 
62. Build popups with segmenting questions to be market to your audience more efficiently
63. Sync your popup with a simple auto responder email that matches the offer you are pushing
64. Make sure your shipping notification emails are sent in a timely manner to reduce returns and customer service inquiries

Shipping

Ship is one of the most common pinch points for brands thanks to Amazon, so it’s crucial to dial in your shipping rates and process

65. Take time to balance your margins with shipping and try to avoid price gouging people with shipping
66. If you have a special shipping offer (ex. free over $50 or free for a specific product) push it throughout the site so people are very aware 
67. Offer free shipping whenever possible 
68. Free shipping is not possible for all brands due to margins and shipping rates, so if you can’t offer free shipping, offer as low as possible
69. Offer multiple shipping options only if you can actually ship quickly. 2 day shipping doesn’t matter if you take 7 days to fulfill orders
70. A good rule of thumb for free shipping starting points is 10-20% over your average order value - this only applies if you’ve never offered free shipping

Miscellaneous

71. Search functionality, especially for larger stores
72. Test your upsells. For some brands, upsells won’t affect your conversion rate very much but will improve your average order value. For others, it’ll have a larger impact on your conversions
73. Popups can be incredibly useful, however they can also be a detriment to your customer’s experience. Reducing popups can speed up the actual purchase time due to less clicks
74. Reduce unnecessary code to improve speed
75. Make sure all of your links are working properly 
76. Build your 404 page to help people find what they are looking for
    

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As you focus on your conversion rate, keep in mind that having a holistic growth strategy on your site is crucial. Even if you gave away free money, your site still wouldn’t convert at 100%! With that in mind, it’s important to think about other wins as well.

A win could be an email sign up or even a form fill out from someone that just needs a little more nudge before buying.

Lastly, remember that every brand is unique and not all of these points will apply to your brand so be mindful of your historic performance and keep focusing on growth!